


Treasure

by Luluthechoosingcrow



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Banter, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Happy Ending, Humor, M/M, Magic, Magical Bond, My First Work in This Fandom, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Racism, Slow Burn, Smut, Spell Failure, Spells & Enchantments, Swearing, Tags May Change, also duh, like duh, some other minor/mentioned pairings but penntin is the main
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23636380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luluthechoosingcrow/pseuds/Luluthechoosingcrow
Summary: Quentin fucks up a spell (Penny may or may not have also helped/hindered).Quentin is the reason why everything smells like the Bog of Eternal Stench and Penny can't see.Quentin’s run-amuck brain brings all sorts of problems to the table.Quentin is starting to make Penny feel funny in his chest (and his pants).Fuck Quentin, man.
Relationships: Margo Hanson & Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater/Alice Quinn, William "Penny" Adiyodi/Pearl Sunderland, William "Penny" Adiyodi/Quentin Coldwater
Comments: 26
Kudos: 49





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Practical Applications (of Falling in Love)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663700) by [echomoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/echomoon/pseuds/echomoon). 



> I’m nearly through season one and am also not willing to put in hours of research on this universe’s magical rituals, so -- keep that in mind, I guess. That being said, I am in LOVE with this show and also this pairing. 78 stories on ao3?!? Fair, but sad…. I am falling hard and fast for Penntin (idk the ship name). So I had to write out everything in my brain. So here. Plays off of some of the other fics on here, particularly “Practical applications of falling in love” -- kudos to you, @echomoon, that was amazing and I can’t stop thinking on the concept!!
> 
> I have decided that I will just post this first chapter to see if people are into it and hopefully keep going from there. So, regrettably, no update schedule yet but I'll try

The smell was  _ everywhere. _ It burned through Penny’s nose like it had a personal vendetta against every single one of his nostril hairs (which, it had been kindly pointed out a few years ago by a bitch who will remain unnamed, numbered quite a few. Especially visible when underneath him, which almost everyone was in this apparent plane of Hobbits. Right, moving on. Bitch.)

He covered his nose with his hands, then the scarf wrapped loosely around his neck - purple silk, today - but the smell just kept coming and coming until he was nearly choking. 

In the back of his mind, Penny could  _ feel _ the waves of panic, frustration, and disgust coming off of Quentin fucking Coldwater in a mixture much similar to what he was feeling. More panic, or course, cause the guy was a walking circus accident, and some various streams of babbling mind diarrhea lamenting about the awful smell. Surprisingly, the guy had a vocabulary Penny could almost be impressed by. But he was much more focused on himself and his dying nose, no matter how insistent Quentin’s feelings were.

And Penny would like to point out that he never  _ willingly _ associated with that geek. It was always outside forces convening to push them together, whether in a study group or room assignments or the weird-ass plot against their lives that somehow connected Mothman and cursed daggers and creepy pedaphilic authors (that he would have liked to punch in the face). 

Of course, that ever-present, invisible asshole (fate, god, the Dean; what did he care?) pushed them together yet again with more disastrous results. 

Like them being together in the same room at all.

Like them being paired up to do spell work.

Like them fucking it up. 

The disastrous fucking results he just  _ knew _ were going to happen were, apparently, this smell. He had scented some pretty bad (literal) shit in his lifetime, but  _ nothing _ compared to the absolute atrocity that was Quentin bungling a simple ass locator spell. 

“Oh, my god!”

And that was the fucking idiot, desperately clutching his ever-present baggy shirt over his face like it would do some good against it. Magical stenches did not, as it appeared, let themselves be blocked out so easily. 

Penny rolled his eyes - watering like a baby’s, he might add - and made his way over to a window on the backside of the class, pounding at the frame with his fist when it wouldn’t fucking budge. 

_ Stupid Quentin, going and burning his nose because he couldn’t fucking concentrate on anything other than Alice’s tits. Bet he had something to do with the stuck window, too.  _

“Come ON, fucking open!” Penny muttered. 

He was desperate for fresh air. He would beg and cry if he had to - his eyes were already crying, and also did he mention fuck this? - but he just needed this goddamn window to open up, so if he could just get the latch to jiggle a little more to the left-

Aha! Fresh air!

Penny stuck his head out of the window and breathed in deeply, opening his mouth as wide as it would go like a dog on a car ride. He gulped and drank in the life-giving oxygen -- but, but it was-

“-ON’T PENNY! GET AWAY FROM THERE!”

Ugh, Quentin. Trust him to fuck up not only the air inside the classroom but the whole fucking campus as well. He would have to be funding the entire infirmary at this point. 

Sighing (and then retching), Penny pulled back to shut the window and noticed something real fucking peculiar. And creepy. 

Either he had been blinded by the horrible smell - and it  _ was _ that bad, he wasn’t immediately discounting the theory - or a thick fucking fog had rolled in while Penny wasn’t paying attention. Cause he couldn't see  _ anything _ . All across his field of vision was grey -- actually, it was more of a murky blue than grey, and it was moving at a surprising speed for having no conceivable end to it. And it was so thick (like  _ Quentin _ , god Penny was going to fucking kill him).

“Penny! Please get away from the window!”

Quentin was pleading with him now, and Penny almost felt bad about how scared he sounded -- not entirely, though; that voice crack was hilarious. Idiot fucking deserved to be scared. Look what he had done!

  
He turned around to tell him just that, except for, uh, he couldn’t see him. The fog was  _ in the room _ .

The podium near Penny’s left side was a vaguely visible outline, and the front lab table even less so - man, don’t even get him started on the desks and chairs. There was nothing. He could be in Fillary for all he knew-  _ oh. Hell to the fucking no. _

“Quentin!” He roared, “Where the fuck are we?!”

“Wh- what do you mea-- here! We’re in class! Where the hell are  _ you _ ?”

So that was a relief, if a disappointing one (those were called oxymorons, right? Fits. Quentin was a moron who was causing him to run out of fucking oxygen.)

“I’m by the window, dumbass! Trying to get some fresh fucking air, cause you fucking destroyed it all and replaced it with dog shit!”

_ This is worse than dog shit. _

Oh god-fucking-damn. He did not need Quentin’s thoughts right now. Penny carefully moved forward, sweeping one foot in an arch across his path before he stepped down. 

He figured Quentin was doing the same, because he heard the rambling  _ oh fuck what was that where am I where’s Penny I’m such an idiot oh my god was that a rat  _ streaming through his head as Coldwater, clearly, let all his wards down in an effort to fully concentrate on navigation and breathing. 

This once, Penny couldn’t quite blame him for devoting all of his energy to the task at hand instead of blocking him off -- but it was still annoying. He was so good at concentrating and yet Quentin managed to get into his brain clear as glass. And he was so fucking annoying. 

“Fuck, Coldwater! Shut the hell up!” Penny sighed and paused, running a hand over his hair. The waves of panic were increasing. “Just stay where you are and I’ll come to you. But stop thinking,  _ please _ .”

“Yeah, okay- oh! Ow, fuck…”

There was a loud crash and then Quentin's pained noises as he clearly ran into some sort of furniture. Penny sighed again. What idiot had let this guy anywhere near a spellbook? (Nevermind how powerful he occasionally was -- that didn’t make up for stupidity.)

Penny breathed deeply - the one meditation practice he admitted could help, if only to calm him down - and kept making his slow way across the room. He was pretty sure that he was in the center of the room now, but he also knew that not being able to see made distances seem much longer than they were. 

He took another step and ended up tripping over the same goddamn chair Quentin had apparently ran into, because his body landed on another guy’s that made a pathetic “ow” noise again. 

“Jesus Christ, Quent, you could of at least picked yourself back up off of… the…. floor,” he slowly trailed off, looking around. 

There was no more fog. There was no more burning smell. The classroom was exactly like it was before they had started the chant -- empty desks and chairs left behind by all the people who didn’t have slow idiot’s for lab partners, wood paneling that tried and failed to look classy, and the front lab table covered in various magical instruments. 

“What the hell?”

Quentin sat up underneath him - as much as he could - rubbing his nose and sniffing deeply. Penny agreed. The air felt  _ amazing _ , like a soothing balm on his poor, abused air canals. 

He quickly realized that there was still a geek that was responsible for all this mess half-lying on the floor underneath his body, and that someone could walk in at any moment. So that was un-fucking-desirable, in multiple ways (ugh, Quentin. Just thinking about him made Penny shudder.)

With a quick brace of his arms, Penny bolted upright and took several steps away from the nerd -- back into the fog and the awful smell. 

“Ah!”

He looked around, confused and pissed off. Was this some kind of joke the kid was trying to pull on him? 

Penny tried to do a simple fire spell for light, then again, and again; each time more desperately than the last. Nothing. It was like the fog was muting his magic -- it was curling in scarily tentacle-like clouds around his hands, engulfing them in dense smoke and snuffing out any sparks he could have produced. 

Now Penny was panicking a little. 

He was still mostly pissed off, mostly- extremely pissed at Quentin, possibly more than he ever had been before, and frustrated with just a twinge of panic at the absence of his magic; the opposite of the nervous nellie probably still huddled around a chair leg on the floor. 

Something grabbed at his foot, and, suddenly, the smell and fog had gone away again. He could breathe and see and there was a rather large flame coming from his hands, a culmination of the previously snuffed flames all working together to express his rage through fire. 

When he looked down, Quentin was actually clinging to his foot, not a chair, and looking very nervous.  _ What was new _ . Penny tried to kick him off and succeeded after a moment, the blueness invading so suddenly he didn’t even notice the smell of a second. 

Then it was gone,  _ again _ \- he was gonna get whiplash from this shit - and Quentin was hugging his leg,  _ again.  _ This time he looked more sheepish than nervous, and it made Penny want to kick him in the face. 

“I, uh- I think that the fog and the smell only happens when we’re not touching each other.”

What. 

Well, it made sense considering the last three minutes of god dicking with the light switch - not to mention Quentin’s history of idiocracy and miss-castings, but-.  _ Come on. _

  
“Coldwater, I. Am. Going. To. Fucking.  _ Kill _ . You.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I have been binge-watching like a crazy lady and gotten up to the middle of season 3 (which is FAST for me) so this is almost hard to write, knowing things that have happened… but also fun to take it back to a simpler time, in a way. I’m putting this roughly at episode 10 era, I think? Some stuff has happened, but they’re not on any time-entrenched quest right now. 
> 
> Also, the spell they did? Google translate (eek). I tried my best, but I couldn’t find something that seemed fitting in any online spell books so I made my own to suit my purposes. So sorry if you speak Azerbaijani and this is wrong, I just kinda picked a language.
> 
> One last thing: I am still not sure about updates. I know I posted this chapter about a week after the first, but that’s because I’m on spring break and am, as I have said, OBSESSED. The next chapter might be tomorrow, it might be two weeks from now, I don’t know. But I’ll try not to let it hang too long!

“Uh, should we go to the infirmary?”

Penny sighed and rolled his eyes. “No, Q, we should not. Let’s just go through the rest of life blind and unable to smell anything other than that god awful-”

“Okay!” Quentin snapped, surprising him a little, and looked up from where he was kneeling at Penny’s feet. “Look, I’m sorry that we somehow messed up. I don’t know what it was. But whatever the hell happened, clearly we need to stick together. So can we just, I don’t know, get along for a bit?”

“Hmm…. No.”

Quentin huffed but shakily stood up anyways, keeping a hand on Penny’s body the whole time; Penny thought about knocking him in the jaw when he felt fingers running from his knee all the way up to his ribs. Instead, he let Quentin do it - he liked breathing clean even more than personal space - and tried to ignore the odd shiver that ran up his spine. 

They grudgingly maintained contact, by arm or back and once by Penny yanking Quentin’s stupid hair, as they gathered up their belongings. Quentin was still a nervous, confused mess as he babbled mentally about what could have gone wrong. Penny grit his teeth at the panicked monologue and answered each suggestion that popped up in his head with a terse “no”, “maybe”, “don’t be dumb”, or “better not be”.

\----------

The girl at the infirmary sighed when she saw them. Penny couldn’t say he blamed her; both of them had been in here. A lot. Together, usually. Because they either got hurt by each other or on the other’s behalf.

“What is it this time? I don’t see any blood…”

Penny grunted. What a fucking day. At least there  _ wasn’t _ any blood, he had to concede (though, if he had to spend another minute with Quentin…). He followed her along to the room he usually ended up in, dragging Q by the wrist until they reached the bed. 

She busied herself with something on a clipboard while Penny stood with a death grip on Quentin’s hand. Any looser and the guy would start pacing like a madman, he could feel the desire in his head. And wasn’t this just fucking annoying? It was over, they weren’t gonna lose each other, could he put his goddamn wards back up?!

“So, what’s the problem, then?”

She blinked expectantly, and Penny had the brief thought that she was very beautiful. Tilted eyes, dark hair, a pointed, pale face and very pink lips.

Quentin gave him an odd, almost alarmed look - like he was worried about something Penny had said - but he ignored it. He hadn’t said anything at all; Coldwater must have hit his head hard when he tripped like an idiot.

“This one fucked up a locator spell,” he said, jerking Quentin’s wrist in his grasp so the guy lurched forward a bit. “We’re fine if we’re touching, but the moment we let go there’s this smelly, blinding fog. Also, I think he hit his head cause he  _ won’t stop looking at me. _ ”

He didn’t like how  _ she _ was looking at him -- like he had just started speaking Tagalog instead of English. Were those really such weird symptoms? But he knew he hadn’t been speaking gibberish, at least, because Quentin nodded in shameful agreement. Though, he had heard a ‘your fault, too’ somewhere in his head. 

“Shut it, asswipe,” he hissed. Then he turned to address the confused lady again. “Look, can you just get Lispon. Please?”

_ Since when do you say please. _

Penny glared at Quentin and sat back on the bed, not bothering to hide his smirk as Coldwater stumbled and landed half on top of him. They both half-heartedly shoved at each other and settled onto the hospital bed, legs pressed together. He reached for a glass of water that had materialized on the bedside table and accidentally ceased contact, the smell hitting so sudden he could barely contain the bile in his throat. 

Quentin squealed - fucking  _ squealed  _ \- and Penny looked back at him with a start -- he was completely clear. Every greasy strand of hair, every zit on his ugly mug, the shocked look in his watering eyes. They stared at each other and the smell stopped and the fog melted away, like a shitty adventure movie at the peak of it’s quest; treasure located. 

He scowled and knocked their knees together, bringing the rest of the room back into light. Lipson came hurrying around the corner, heels clicking, and Penny sighed. He didn’t feel good about this. 

\----------

“Interesting. Very interesting.”

Penny wanted to murder Dean Fogg. He wanted to murder everyone. He especially wanted to murder Quentin, but that wasn’t really new. Right now, though, Dean Fogg in particular could go fuck a hornet’s nest along with his loathed “roomie”.

He grit his teeth against what was very clearly a bad steal of cinema doctors’ lines and shifted in the wooden chair. It creaked in the most irritating way - purposefully tortuous, awkwardly long and broken up, never quite coming to an end - and he was ready to murder the entire faculty  _ right now. _

The only thing that kept him from leaping up and snatching the tumbler of whiskey out of the Dean’s hands, if nothing else, was the fucking magical chain wound around his and Quentin’s wrists. Cause that was just the icing on this foggy, shit-scented cake. 

“So you don’t know what you did?” the Dean asked them.

Penny bristled. “Man, if we did, do you think we’d fucking be in here?”

Fogg shrugged and raised his hands in a placating gesture -- Penny hated that. He hated people trying to make him forget his anger when he was justifiably upset.  _ Hated _ it. Especially when it was people with more power trying to tell him to be satisfied with the little they gave him.

_ Answers. For once at this fucking school I just want a straight answer.  _

_ Yup, agreed. I wouldn’t have asked like Penny but, man, we just want answers. What did we do? _

Had… had Q just responded to him? To his  _ thoughts?  _ That had never happened -- it wasn’t supposed to happen. Sure, Quentin’s thought diarrhea leaked all the time but HIS was not supposed to. He was the tightest warded psychic on this fucking campus! Loose-lips over there shouldn’t be able to break into him. 

_ Oh shit, really? Sorry dude, I’m not  _ trying _ to.  _

He had thought that it was just Quentin’s shitty wards, but if they were having a mental conversation here, as in a two way street where he was fucking exposed, this was  _ not good _ . At all. It was also very annoying -- like, seriously, universe? Of all the people to be chained up to and mentally communicating with, it was  _ Quentin?  _

“Ahem, Penny?”

He blinked back to concentration as the Dean leaned forward and stared at him through those kinda-creepy-kinda-cool glasses. Why the fuck was everyone staring at him? He was not at fault here!

_ Well, I mean… you messed up too. But I don’t know. Did they say something? _

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Quentin!”

The Dean sat back in his seat. “Glad you’re back with us, Penny. As I was saying, do you recall which spell you were trying to cast?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. He just wanted to sleep. “It was some locator, I can’t really pronounce the name. We were trying to find a lost item? We chose one of my scarfs that’s probably hidden somewhere in the Physical Cottage. Eliot keeps stealing my shit.”

“I think I know what it was.”

Suddenly, heels clicked, and the voice of a certain sexy, blonde professor spoke up behind him. She laid a hand on Penny’s shoulder and he settled into it, privately happy to have her there. Sure, she was still a professor, but she was cool and helped him out (and she really was beautiful. He would sleep with her even if it wasn’t for school.)

_ Oh Jesus, dude, seriously? Sunderland? _

_ Quentin- _

“Spell for revealing the truth. Həqiqəti üzə çıxarmaq üçün yazın. It’s in Azerbaijani, and they had to translate it themselves if I’m not mistaken.”

Quentin nodded his head and his ridiculous fucking hair swung with it like a car wash. Penny grit his teeth. This whole situation was fucking fucked! Even the sight of Quentin sitting next to him, having to hear his thoughts, feel his hand chained to Penny’s -- it was driving him insane. The guy’s very existence could grate on his nerves, sometimes ( _ especially _ when he was being an idiot and ruining life for Penny).

“Well, let’s go over your notes and see if we can find the problem that way.”

His wrist was roughly yanked as Quentin shuffled around in his bag and got the notebook they - 80% Penny - had been doing the work out of. There were pages of scribbled symbols, diagrams, and translations; hours and hours of work sent down the drain by an idiot. 

_ Might I remind you that, if you did eighty percent of the work, you’re eighty percent at fault here? _

You know what? If this little dude wanted to talk back to Penny in his own fucking head then  _ fine. _

_ Might I remind you, I can make your miserable life even worse with a snap of my fingers?  _

Quentin huffed and turned his head. Coward. Penny could feel thoughts from Quentin’s mind inside of his own, but he decided to ignore them for now; there were more important things to do. Like removing the leech on his arm.

“Oh,” Professor Sunderland gasped, and Penny looked up.

That didn’t sound like a good oh. If this was permanent - or if the cure cost him even a hair off of his ass - Penny was going to kill Quentin. 

_ You keep saying you’re going to kill everyone. Can you just hurry up and do it already, then? _

_ Keep talking smart-ass, I’ll get you when you least expect it. _

_ Blah blah blah. I know what you’re thinking! You can’t get the one up on me now.  _

Penny scowled and turned back to Sunderland. He could feel Quentin gloating in his head but he ignored it, again, for the sake of maturity and his sanity. The notebook was propped up against a globe on the Dean’s desk and they all peered at it, reading first the original spell pasted in and then the scribbled translation next to it. 

İtirilmiş şeyi tapın. 

Gözlərimi bağlayın. 

Düşüncələrimi istiqamətləndirin. 

Məni uydurmalardan müəyyənləşdir. 

İtirilmiş şeyi tapın.

Find the one that was lost. 

Unblind my eyes. 

Guide my thoughts. 

Deter me from falsities.

Find the one that was lost.

“The one?” Sunderland’s voice came, next to Penny’s right ear, and he looked up at her. 

She looked nervous, which caused some anxiety to roll in his own gut; Quentin was feeling the same. Ten times as intense, of course, cause he was Quentin, but… the look on her face was bad. The whole situation was fucking bad. Quentin was so dead. 

“What’s wrong with it?”

She looked at Quentin. Fogg came around the desk and poured two fingers of brandy into two cups, handing one to each of them. They looked at each other as the chain around their wrists - keeping them together, per Lipson’s assistance - rattled. 

_ This is bad if he’s giving us alcohol to cut the news with. _

“Your translation was off by one word, but it was a big one,” Sunderland began, her hand tightening on Penny’s shoulder. Somehow, it was no longer comforting -- he shrugged her off. She continued slowly. 

“The spell was used by ancient explorers to find lost items, usually in cursed areas. The goal was to set their sight on the one thing, and the one thing only, so they wouldn’t get distracted by sirens or other treasure or anything like that. What you did… instead of sending yourself on a hunt for a scarf, you sent yourself on a quest for “the one that was lost”. Somehow, you set each other up as the objects, and now the spell will try and deter you from anything that separates you.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is quite a bit overdue, I’m sorry! I’ve been working on a lot of stuff and finishing a lot of classes, things have been… chaotic. And I’m still in season 3! I haven’t had time to finish it up :( ANYWAYS here is chapter three (duhh) where they flop back and forth between fighting and almost getting along (aka flirting), as is their usual. Books and some slightly nerdy fandom shit is discussed. Reminder that this is a slow build!

This wasn’t real. He was just dreaming. It was a very bad, hyper realistic dream, but a dream nonetheless. Like that thing Quentin had been stuck in-

Oh, yeah. Fucking Quentin. Penny was stuck in this thing WITH him.  _ Unbelievable.  _

_ I wish it was a dream, dude. But I’ve had too many nightmares. I know this isn’t one.  _

“Oh, fuck off!” Penny snarled. He hated this. He hated having to be right next to Quentin -  _ chained _ to him - reliant on him for any of his senses to work. Touching each other. Mentally tied. 

It was like the worst goddamn prank in the universe. And the only person who was laughing was Eliot, when he’d come by to visit his fucking boy-toy and saw them tied up and sulking on Quentin’s bed.

“Ooh, I’m sorry to interrupt-” and Penny had never hated a voice more than he did then, and that was saying something, “-but I think you two angsty, handsome fellows could use a drink. Come downstairs! Have a cocktail, dance, party it up! I can smell your death glares from the bar.”

And then he turned with a dramatic flourish and a flip of  _ Penny’s _ scarf and disappeared out the door again. What. The. Fuck. 

“I hate him.”

Quentin sighed and flopped back onto his Deathstar pillow (and Penny was NEVER going to admit that it was actually pretty cool), slightly jostling their wrists where they’d been resting on the bedspread. He kicked at Penny’s ankle and got a squinty scowl in return. 

“You hate everyone, apparently. But Eliot’s not that bad, just… pushy.”

“Of course you’d say that,” Penny huffed. He did actually admire Eliot for who he was - confident, sophisticated, fearless, persevering - but he was also kind of a dick. And it irked him to no end when Eliot and Quentin interacted/flirted/intensely eye fucked, though he couldn’t understand or explain why.    
  


Penny was absolutely going to ignore that he and Eliot were very similar and maybe that’s why they butted heads so often. 

“Do you actually want to go downstairs? Even if you don’t like Eliot. You know he makes good drinks…” Quentin asked after a minute, still staring straight up at the ceiling. 

Penny considered it, and him. Q was being a little less aggravating than usual. Not to say that Penny still wasn’t annoyed by his mere geeky presence and diarrhea thoughts cause he  _ was,  _ but-. Coldwater was clearly making an effort to not be as consciously annoying as he could; he appreciated it, if only a little bit. Should Penny try to be nicer back? They  _ were _ going to be spending every second of their lives together for the foreseeable future until Sunderland found a cure, so maybe he should…

Nah. 

_ Seriously? You just acknowledged that I’m trying to not push your buttons and yet you’re still gonna be an asshole? _

_ Yep. _

“C’mon,” Penny said aloud, standing up and only barely waiting for Quentin to scramble after him. “Some whiskey could help. Maybe I’ll like you more if you’re blacked out.”

Quentin came along with him (well, not like he had a choice), mind-mumbling that he wasn’t such a lightweight that a couple whiskey sours would knock him out. Penny had to concede -- since they’d started Brakebills, there’d been a lot of parties at the Physical Cottage, and a lot of alcohol. Quentin was almost developing a higher tolerance. Almost. 

_ And what, you can out-drink me until your liver fails? Big fucking whoop.  _

_ Such a goody-two-shoes. And YES I can! Now come the fuck on already, stop dragging your feet.  _

Quentin grumbled some more - it was like his stomach and his mouth had switched places in his body (or maybe it was his ass) - and walked behind Penny, keeping as far away from him as their linked hands would allow. It was uncomfortable to have their arms stretched at the angle, especially when trying to navigate around people giving them weird looks, but neither one of them was going to do anything about it. Sacrificing comfort for pride, because they’d had to sacrifice pride for comfort already. Did that make sense? What-the-fuck-ever, Penny thought; Eliot was coming with drinks. 

“Ah, there you are! A mint julep for you, and a sidecar for you. Enjoy, let me know if you need a third for the handcuff action!”

Penny growled - he had been  _ trying _ to ignore the fact that everyone thought they were handcuffed in some kinky sex-magic-gone-wrong - and took the glass with a glare. It was cool under his fingers, already sweating from the rather humid air inside the party house. At least he had some fucking alcohol now. 

“To liver failure and not actually kinky not-sex-magic-gone-wrong.”

Quentin’s voice startled him, and Penny looked over to where Q was holding out his orange sidecar with a sardonic, if hesitant, look on his mug. 

Penny sighed and clinked their glasses before taking a long sip; Coldwater looked surprised that he’d accepted. He drank, too, and smacked his lips in a way that made Penny immediately irritated with him for the five hundredth time today. 

Oh, what’s that you had been saying Sunderland, they’d get along great? Yeah fucking right. Quentin was annoying -- loud when it wasn’t needed and too shy when it was, clumsy, wimpy, an absolute pushover, and such a spoiled little nerd. Penny was his exact opposite. They did not get along, and there was a good reason. He’d just been reminded of how much he  _ hated _ the sound of the guy fucking moving his lips, not even speaking. 

There were a lot of moments where Quentin was actually hilarious, relatable, fierce, or even friendly to Penny -- but they didn’t add up. Not nearly enough. 

The ice in the bottom of his glass rattled, and Penny realized that he’d drunk all of his bourbon-mint-sugar-water concoction, saving only a few chunks of ice and a soggy mint leaf. Quentin also appeared to be nursing the last sip of his cocktail while dutifully ignoring Penny’s sulking thoughts about himsel- no, wait a fucking second. Penny did not  _ sulk _ , he went over the facts in his head. 

_ My _ _ head. Get out of it, Coldwater.  _

_ I’m trying, believe me. I don’t need to hear anymore about what you think of me. Dick.  _

_ You sure? Cause I’ve got plenty more to say.  _

Quentin turned his back. Their arms were at an even worse angle now, but he refused to acknowledge it or Penny’s annoyed tugging. Great. He’d offended the little wimp and now they were stuck down here, unmoving, with no alcohol left in their cups and an insolent silence. 

Why oh why couldn’t he have been chained to literally anyone else? Then they  _ could _ get down to some kinky-sex-magic and not be stuck in some five year old’s standoff where they both sulked and pouted before hitting each other when someone said something mean- 

“Get out of my head!!! I DON’T sulk! Or pout!”

At least three other people were looking at him weirdly but he  _ didn’t fucking care. _ They didn’t have to deal with some invasive little creep reading their thoughts and painting him as a giant, asshole toddler. Okay, yes, Penny owned up to the fact that he was an asshole, but he was  _ definitely _ way more mature and put-together than Fillory’s #1 Fanboy over here. 

_ God, could you at least come up with some new insults? I’ve been hearing this same shit my whole life. Pick on something new.  _

“Hmm, okay. You wear Axe body spray like you’re still in seventh grade.”

Penny wasn’t sure what prompted him to actually answer the not-request in Quentin’s head (that then got catapulted into his own via  _ the fucking spell _ great now he couldn’t blame anything on Quentin’s lack of wards godDAMN it-- ahem) but there was nothing better to do, he supposed. There were plenty of hot chicks at the party, but he wasn’t nearly desperate enough - yet, at least - to fuck anyone in front of The Lord of Geeks. They could get some more alcohol, but that wouldn’t actually alleviate most of the boredom for long. And he doubted Q would want to get high.

“Depends on the substance. And what, you think you smell so much better, Casanova? You think that cheap cologne you wear is good but it’s really not, you smell like an old man who bathes in cinnamon.” 

Fine, he wants to play? He can play. But he’ll  _ lose. _

“Yeah? At least I have the capacity to read beyond the elementary level! Do you own  _ anything _ other than children’s fantasy books?”

“Penny, I have literally never seen you read a book before. How do  _ I  _ know that  _ you _ know how to read beyond the elementary level?” Quentin huffed, turning to face him. 

“I can read!” He ignored the several heads turning at the fact he had to loudly proclaim that statement. “What, just cause I’m some brown boy from a foster home you think I’m dumb? I’ve read all the fucking classics, Geek Boy, I just didn’t like them.”

“Wait, you were in a foster home? I didn’t know that…” Quentin said, a little more hesitantly, and the momentum slowed a bit. 

Penny might have been being a little testy.  _ Maybe _ . So Quentin wasn’t making a jab at a sore spot cause he didn’t even know about that. He was still annoying (and Penny was going to ignore that, at this point, the anger and annoyance felt almost fake. They were still, technically, having an argument).

“Yeah, I was. And there was nothing better to do so I read all the books I could find.”

“Okay, yeah that makes sense. But, why don’t you like any of the classics. They’re classics!” Quentin protested, after quietly taking in the information. There was a weird warmth in Penny that Quentin really wasn’t dwelling on the foster home thing, not even in his explosive brain. He really didn’t care. 

“I’ll explain and I’ll use small words so you’ll be sure to understand, you warthog-faced buffoon.  _ Racism and sexism. _ ”

“Hey, did you just quote  _ The Princess Bride  _ at me?”

His face got a little warm. From the alcohol Elliot had brought over again in the middle of their argument/conversation. Totally. 

_ So, it’s a good insult. Sue me. You ARE a buffoon.  _

“And you’re a hippopotamic land mass,” Penny gasped in mock offense, “but, no I suppose you’re right about that. Most of those books are…”

“Sexist and racist. Like I said. A bunch of old, white geezers pretending they know shit.”

“To be fair, I don’t think we know much more. Equality and modern medicine, sure, but…”

It turned melancholy rather quickly. Or not melancholy, contemplative? Reflective? It was both very uncomfortable for them to be experiencing their own ponderings about life  _ and _ each other’s, but it was also. Nice. Comfortable. Offering a new perspective on some things. 

Quentin listened to what Penny said, he suddenly realized. Maybe he was dumb and annoying and din’t do as told, but he  _ always _ heard him out and considered it. And he knew  _ The Princess Bride _ well enough to recognize a quote and say it back. 

“You’re okay when you’re drunk,” Penny aid aloud, knocking Q in the shoulder with his free hand. Quentin raised a brow that said he’d also heard everything Penny was saying, but he didn’t comment on it. 

“You’re an asshole. But I’m getting used to you, too. I can barely even smell the cinnamon anymore!”

“Oh, fuck you!” Penny guffawed. “It’s cause your nostrils are clogged with that fucking Axe!”


End file.
